Re: [Taler] How about a Non-anonymous Taler?

[Sheogorath]

On Sun, 2021-01-31 at 02:52 +0100, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) wrote:
> selling data to credit bureaus (Schufa etc.).  So I suppose payments
> with Taler would need to be more expensive, unlike cash or crypto?
> 

I think there is a huge misunderstanding on how expensive cash and
"crypto currencies" are. Crypto Currencies have a huge hardware cost in
almost all cases and require to keep much more infrastructure in place
to function properly than Taler does.

And when it comes to cash. Cash is super expensive. People just don't
notice it because it's paid by taxes due to being maintained by
national banks. But even then when you hand cash in for your bank, you
pay for counting, coins and more.

>From that perspective Taler is not at all more expensive than cash or
crypto currencies.

At least from what I read[1] about the ideas around the new "E-Euro" by
the European Central Bank[2], the goal is to provide an rather
anonymous way to pay while keeping control over the currency issuing.
(Which sounds at least to some degree very much like concept that are
deeply embedded in Taler.)

Therefore, I don't think we need to try to strip any privacy from Taler
to appeal to anyone. Since the incentive is to create digital cash, not
yet another tracked online payment method no one feels pleasant to use.

[1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/ezb-digitaler-euro-101.html
(german)
[2]: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/html/digitaleuro-report.en.html


-- 
Signed
Sheogorath

OpenPGP: https://shivering-isles.com/openpgp/0xFCB98C2A3EC6F601.txt